MUSE Cells Explained: Anti-Aging, Zero Rejection, and the Future of Stem Cell Therapy | #185

Researchers have discovered a new ultra-resilient subpopulation of cells that's hidden inside of our own tissue, and they're called Muse cells. One of the cool things they do is that once they're in a damaged tissue, they actually can digest and eat up the damaged cells. We've seen incredible results for people with systemic conditions, brain issues, musculoskeletal problems. I want to emphasize how powerful they are, and I've seen incredible, incredible results. That's why I'm so passionate. That's why people keep coming.. And they keep coming back. So you want to keep up the repair and then stay in a youthful state. Hello, welcome back to the Dr. Joy Kong podcast. I'm really happy that I'm back here with you one-on-one to talk about some subject that I think will be helpful for you. So today we're going to talk about Muse cells. It has become a buzzword in the regenerative medicine community. A lot of patients are actually asking me about it. Yeah. So both in my clinic and on social media. So it's time to just talk a little bit about it and give you a little bit more background. I don't know if you've heard about the Kardashians getting Muse Cells, and that probably helped propel the popularity of the subject. So let me just break it down a little bit. Most of you probably have heard of mesenchymal stem cells sourced from various, you know, sources because they are in the bone marrow, small amounts, and then in umbilical cord, a very rich source of mesenchymal stem cells. So We are seeing some limitations, although we've seen incredible results from these sources of therapies. But one limitation is that there may be some limit as far as how long they actually survive in the body. So I talked about how autologous sources, which means from your own body, or allogeneic sources means from somebody else. These cells, none of them live for a very long time in the body. Some do survive. So they're absolutely survival. There's a survival rate. No one knows exactly how Many cells actually survive, maybe between 2 to 5%. I've seen research where there's a higher percentage of these cells actually survive in the body, but majority of what they do is provide signals. And I've talked about this in various videos about how these signaling functions can actually produce powerful healing. And this is what I do in the clinic, right? We've seen incredible results for people with, you know, systemic conditions, brain issues, different organ issues, musculoskeletal problems. So it, it, it can be very powerful, but the limitation and concern is that a lot of them don't survive. They don't integrate enough into the tissue that we want them to rebuild. Researchers, thankfully, have discovered a new highly specific and ultra-resilient subpopulation of cells that's hidden inside of our own tissue, and they're called Muse cells. We're gonna look at the history of stem cell therapy just a little bit, and then look at how Muse cells can help transition us into maybe a more targeted way of healing. First of all, let's talk about using your own cells. When we derive cells from the bone marrow, which is the earliest form of stem cell therapy, so usually the cells are harvested from the hip bone. They are naturally programmed to maintain and repair musculoskeletal system. Highly effective for localized environments that's linked to damaged joint or degraded cartilage. And they can also help systemic conditions. So bone marrow stem cell transplant is one major therapy for autoimmune conditions. The limitations, if you look at what happens to us as we age, everything declines, including your stem cells. If you're in your 50s, 60s, or even further, your bone marrow stem cells have aged with you and their overall count drops significantly. And their abilities to replicate and provide their signaling functions have just declined. There's no way around it because that's a genetic wear and tear. And then there's fat-derived stem cells that can be harvested through a minor liposuction procedure. And the fat tissue actually contain a fairly large concentration of stem cells per gram than bone marrow. It's actually a lot higher in concentration of mesenchymal stem cell compared to the bone marrow. These cells can excel at releasing localized anti-inflammatory molecules and promoting the growth of new blood vessels. They're very helpful at cosmetic rejuvenation of localized tissue and help reduce inflammation and have been used for systemic conditions with success. The limitations that they are lineage committed, they are highly efficient at making fat, bone, or connective tissue, but cannot readily transform into more functional internal organ cells like liver or heart cells. When you want something that to be more targeted, there is limitation, but they also carry the same age-related limitations as the bone marrow cells because they decline not only in capabilities, but also in their ability to detect cancer and get rid of cancer. So this is a big difference between younger cell sources and the older cells. So I've talked about it in one of the videos. What about birth tissue using the umbilical cord? We know extracting cells from an adult patient can be invasive and can produce older cells for you, which is why the regenerative medicine community has made a significant shift toward using umbilical cord cells. So I sort of anticipated that 10 years ago. I knew there was going to be this shift. These cells have longer telomeres, they have more generations left. They can differentiate into more types of cells. They are more anti-inflammatory, more neuroprotective. They have younger mitochondria that they can donate and give your cells. They also have better abilities at detecting cancer and removing cancer. So there has been no really evidence of cancer-promoting issues from these younger umbilical cord source cells. So they are considered, you know, very young, but embryologically speaking, it's not really day zero, right? Day zero of you is at fertilization. When you were a fertilized egg, that was still you. You were, you were full of potential. Right? Just incredible potential to become anything, you know, produce any kind of cells in the body. And as the embryo start to form, the cells, they're all stem cells, but they're all starting to manifest with different functions. And when the umbilical cord was getting formed, a lot of the young cells during this formation were trapped. So these cells, when you look at the age of the cells, is actually in between the fertilized egg and the baby's stem cells. However, the stem cells from the umbilical cord are younger than the baby stem cell. They're in between the embryonic stem cells and then later on, uh, the baby stem cells. So they're actually sitting at this biological, uh, vantage point where they have a lot of, of potentials, way more than the baby stem cells. But they also do not carry the same kind of concern we have with embryonic stem cells because they can form uncontrolled growth. That's called teratoma. So there is a risk of fresh new tumor. So that's one reason it's still not legal in the United States because we have trouble still controlling how these cells develop. The limitations of umbilical cord stem cells still, there is an attrition rate. So once I give the cells to the person, majority of them will die. So that's true. Within 1 to 3 months, most of them are gone. So some do stay in the body, but very tiny amount. And they do exert their benefits through signaling. Although, remember, 1 to 3% of the mesenchymal stem cells actually are MEWS cells. So these cells could be the ones that actually stay, but the amount is small. However, you know, even just with these signaling capabilities, I want to emphasize of how powerful they are because that's what I've been doing for 10 years. And I've seen incredible, incredible results. That's why I'm so passionate. That's why people keep keep coming and they keep coming back because, you know, life, right, can injure you, can age you. Hello, my loyal listeners. I want to interrupt this podcast for just a second because I want to let you know that if you're looking to help solve a major health issue or you're looking for health optimization and just for longevity purposes, you can find us at Chara Health. We are considered the leader in the regenerative medicine and longevity space. And we utilize modalities like stem cell therapy, peptide therapy, plasmapheresis, ozone treatments, laser therapy, all to create a beautiful symphony to get you to where you wanna be. You can find us at www.chara-health.com. That's C-H-A-R-A. So you want to keep up the repair and then stay in a youthful state. So when people come back, but we have seen incredible, incredible healing. If you're interested in learning a little bit more about what the results have been, you can go to American Academy of Integrated Cell Therapy website, aaict.org. That's the organization that I founded to help provide more education to doctors. So there's a section called Case Studies, and you can look at all the cases, and, and majority of them were from my clinic, from my practice. But I also, I've work with a lot of different providers using umbilical cord-derived stem cells. And those results are, are from the use of umbilical cord stem cells. So, aaict.org. MuSE cells. Let's talk about MuSE cells. The MuSE really stands for Multilineage Differentiating Stress-Enduring Cells. And they were discovered in 2010 by Dr. Mari Dezawa at Tohoku University in Japan. And MuSE cells they're really not an entirely different cell type, but they are a rare and elite subpopulation found within mesenchymal stem cells. So that can be found in bone marrow and fat and umbilical cord tissue. So they're just a subpopulation. So the way that it was discovered, it was by accident, but they were exposing these— the culture of mesenchymal stem cells to extreme stress. So these include oxygen deprivation, severe lack of nutrients, physical trauma. In these situations, the standard MSCs usually die off, but there's a fraction of the cells that gets enriched, right? There's more and more of these cells in the culture. What do they do, as besides what MSCs do? One thing that helped them to stand apart is, was this, um, you know, this mechanism of precision homing. That S1P pathway. So when an organ undergoes acute injury or chronic degeneration, like a stroke or myocardial infarction or severe liver damage, et cetera, the damaged cells release a specific stress signal called S1P. And the immune cells possess surface receptors called S1P receptor 2. And these cells can be injected into the bloodstream, and they act like a guided missile, detecting the S1P gradient and travel directly to the site of injury and completely bypassing the healthy tissue. What about differentiation? Um, that's another thing that mu cells are really good for, that they can have this spontaneous differentiation into multiple lineages. That's the, one of the beauties about these cells. They can actually home into the local environment, to the damaged tissue. And one of the cool thing they do is that once they're in a damaged tissue, they actually can digest and eat up the damaged cells. But guess what happens when they eat up the cells? The DNA fragments from those cells, right? The— these different organ-specific cells actually can you know, have different segments of the DNA that's turned on. And these DNA fragments actually trigger these mu cells to start manifesting and to actually become those cells that they just ate. So it's a very elegant way to replace the cells that are not good. Another benefit is that these cells have zero tumor risk, which is really nice. Even though they are similar to embryonic stem cells, in a lot of ways because of their vast potential. And, and then the fact that they can turn into any cells in the body. But they don't have the same kind of tumorigenic potentials as embryonic stem cells. They possess a built-in genetic brake. So even though they express these pluripotency genes, but they naturally stop proliferation once the damaged tissue has been structurally repaired. So they know when to stop and not go haywire. If you do side-by-side comparison, looking at what these cells can do, they are able to survive better in inflamed tissue compared to the other sources I discussed. Autologous or umbilical cord MSCs are more fragile. So they do have a high mortality rate when they're injected into a highly inflamed and low oxygen environment. Whereas Mu cells are stress-enduring, right? That's in their name. The harsher the environment, the more effective that they're activated. And then, for tissue integration, there's advantage— well, there's advantage over umbilical cord and adult MSCs because they actually structurally can engraft into the host tissue and survive for months, offering a true structural reconstruction. Another beautiful thing about mu cells is that they are immune privileged, just like umbilical cord MSC. So the older cells, of course, if you use your own, you don't worry worry about the immune tolerance. But, these mu cells express specific surface markers that shield them from the recipient's immune system, meaning that they can be mass-produced from healthy donors and given to any patient without risk of rejection. What the scientists have done is that they are enriching the population of mu cells in mesenchymal stem cell concoction. So there's a Goldilocks zone. You still want mesenchymal stem cells. You don't want to have 100% mu cells. So it seems the Goldilocks zone is about 30% of the mus, maybe 20 to 30%. That's a, a good ratio without causing potential, some of the side effects. So there are some advantages, but I have to remind people that there are less studies about mu cell therapy. So this is fairly new. So we do have vast experience in the traditional forms of mesenchymal stem cells and umbilical cord stem cell therapy. So this is a new form, even though there's tremendous promise and very powerful. They are a newcomer in the field. Tremendous promise, very exciting. But let's keep watching. You know, a lot of people jump into it, actually including myself. I've tried it as well. And I do, I have to say that I do like it. And also, you know, I've seen in patients chronic issues with, with something. I think there's one time I had some issue with ligament, I think in my hip. And so every time when I tried to meditate, it will cause some discomfort. It was not going away even though, you know, I use peptides, etc. So I did try MuCell. I remember taking it, you know, there's nothing drastic when it comes to me. I just, I don't notice much. But I remember going away on a trip and then 2 weeks later realizing that hip problem that I've had just is completely disappeared. Actually, I can't even pinpoint where the problem was. It was just complete healing. So that, that was very encouraging. I've seen that with other patients as well. So, so it bodes well for the therapy. Anyhow, so that's today's episode, and I encourage you to please hit the subscribe button so you can always get to see what I bring to you, because I'm here to help you live a better and longer life. And if you want to connect with me directly, you can always go to my Instagram @Dr_Joy_Kong, and I do respond to comments. I enjoy interacting with everybody. I'm here to support you. So until the next time, thank you for watching and listening. If you enjoy this kind of content, please subscribe and turn on your notification bell so you don't miss any of my future content. And if you want to learn more about regenerative medicine or other modalities in anti-aging medicine, please go to my YouTube channel, Joy Kong, MD, and there are all kinds of videos to help you keep learning.